He probably thought I was insane.
But that’s OK, because I think he’s insane. I think he’s so insane I can’t stop thinking about him. What did he mean by invisible, exactly? And more importantly: how did he know that I was? Surely the point of being invisible is that no one can see you. He must have X-ray vision, I think, but doing so doesn’t help me.
It only makes things worse, because who wouldn’t be intrigued by a man with superhero eyes? If I call again I might find out he has other skills, like the ability to fly in through a window and save me from this stultifying existence.
And for a while I come close to calling him. I get as far as the last digit, but before I can hear the purring ring in my ear I slam the phone back down again. I’m not a weak person, tricked by strange mind games and just waiting for some Superman to come rescue me. I know that he never will, for a start.
But oh, my foolish heart.
How my foolish heart fails me when my phone suddenly goes, ten seconds later. It actually seems to jerk in my chest, before slowly dissolving through my insides. I flick my gaze to that previously innocuous piece of machinery, angry at it for changing. Angry at the ring that now seems as sharp as a knife and dark as midnight.
It makes me think of horror movies, when you know the killer’s calling. The startled heroine, that lonely drilling tinkle, the wide-eyed stare in the phone’s direction … it’s all there. I actually catch myself with my mouth open. I have to compose myself and close it, before I pick up the receiver. And it’s a close call, even then.
I almost go get myself a drink of water.
But I’m glad I decide otherwise.
‘Hello, Alissa,’ he says, and for one mad second I know how Lois Lane feels. I threw up the signal and he came calling, right on cue. ‘Are you ready to finish our conversation now?’
I’m amazed he even remembers our conversation, in-between million-pound meetings and making himself so slick and flawless. The suit alone must take a thousand years to put on, with all of its buttons and extra bits and the always imminent threat of ruining something so expensive. I bet he has to lever it on with tweezers. I bet geishas roll it onto his body using their breasts.
And yet here he is, just waiting to finish something so pale and slight.
It makes me think it wasn’t pale and slight at all. Somehow I’ve stumbled into a Very Serious Discussion about important things, and now I have to finish it. How do I finish it? What were we even saying?
‘Describe your face to me.’
I definitely don’t think we were discussing that.
‘Why? Don’t you know what it looks like?’ I ask, confused. He saw me in the lobby, didn’t he? Though when I think back … how would he have known I was the same person, hiding in the wardrobe? He couldn’t have, not for sure.
And I don’t feel like explaining. Everything might end, if I do.
‘How would I?’ he says, and I can almost hear his shrug through the phone. Just one big shoulder, as lazy and casual as a basking lion.
‘Well, you know where I work. You must have found things out about me.’
‘So you think I’m some obsessive stalker. From invisible to so sure of yourself in under a day. Very impressive.’
‘No, I don’t think … that’s not what I meant,’ I say, but I flounder over what I did actually mean. In the end I have to settle for the truth, even though doing so makes me picture that lion, suddenly baring all of its teeth. ‘It’s just that … well … you seem like a stalker. And also a mind-reader.’
‘You think I found out where you work because of mind-reading?’
He sounds so amused I almost take the words back. But in the end I think it’s better that I stand my ground. If he is a maniac, he’ll know I have him pegged now. He’ll picture me with my thumb on speed dial to the police, and never put me in a box beneath his stairs.
I’m not fooled by you, I think at him – though my actual words sound weak.
‘Possibly.’
‘Ah, possibly again. Not sure, can’t decide, don’t want to commit.’
‘Why would I want to commit something to someone I barely know? You haven’t even told me your name,’ I say. He doesn’t have to know that I’ve invented hundreds for him, in my head. Stanislav, Arvikov, Amritza, my mind murmurs, even though I’m sure none of those are actually words. ‘And I have no idea how you know mine.’
He laughs, low and dark. I swear the sound rattles my bones.
‘You keep calling me, remember?’ he says, and I want to smack my hand over my face to see my own silliness spelled out like that. Of course, of course, I keep calling him and hanging up. I really am sending out a signal. ‘If you hadn’t, I would have surely bothered you no longer. But seeing your work number in neon was too tempting, so I simply called you back and listened to your delightful answering machine message. How does it go again? “You have reached Alissa Layton, please leave a message after the beep.”’
I’ll admit it. I love the way he says the word ‘beep’. It’s almost a click, instead. It snaps out of him, oddly abrupt and oh, so interesting.
‘That does sound like me.’
‘Why do you think so?’
‘It’s straightforward.’ I hesitate, wanting to hold off on the final verdict. It’s just too damning. I want to claw my way out of the outfit it puts me into, and run newly bared down the nearest street. ‘And dull.’
‘So now we have dull to add to your collection. What were your other terms for yourself? Invisible, and insubstantial?’
‘I might have said something along those lines.’
‘So you don’t think there is anything beneath all of this? Nothing of interest?’
‘Certainly nothing as interesting as the life you lead.’
‘And what makes you think my life is so interesting?’
I see the entrance hall of The Harrington behind my eyes, glossy and glorious. The coil of the receptionist’s hair, the three neat items laid out on the bed like bowls of porridge in the Three Bears’ house.
Which one is just right?
‘You do those things at that hotel.’
It doesn’t come out the way I want it to. It comes out fumbled and childish, with a hint of judgement I didn’t realise I felt. I mean, just because I don’t understand sex doesn’t mean other people can’t, and in a second I’m sure he’ll tell me as much. ‘Shouldn’t people explore if they wish?’ he’ll say, though when this doesn’t happen I’m not grateful. His amusement is back, and it’s just as prickling as it was before.
‘Is that what you think happens there? “Doing things”?’
‘You know what I mean.’
How can he? I don’t even know what I mean.
‘I really don’t. Speak plainly.’
‘I thought I was,’ I say, because I’m a fucking liar. That laughing lilt to his voice just makes me want to lie and lie and lie – but that’s all right.
He tells the truth for me.
‘No, you were speaking in a vague way because you’re afraid to say the actual words.’
How does he do it? Years of reading people over the boardroom table, I suspect, though there are other options. Perhaps he operates in some shady, cut-throat world I can’t even fathom, where everything dances on a knife edge.
Or maybe I’m just really easy to read. I’m a neglected book that’s been left somewhere damp, swollen to twice its size and suddenly filled with enormous words. Most of them probably ask for help. Some might mention loneliness.
All of them must be hidden, immediately.
‘Maybe that’s just because you’re a stranger.’
‘My name is Janos Kovacs,’ he says, casually. He doesn’t know that I cradle those two names to my chest like rare and ready-to-fly birds. ‘There, now we are no longer strangers.’
Indeed we are not. He is Janos, pronounced with a curdled call for silence at the end. He is Hungarian, as I had guessed, and suddenly so large in my head I fear I’ll never get
him out. I have to tear away the rest of him with claws I don’t have.
I’m not this fierce, I think.
I’m not this able to resist.
And yet I am.
‘I don’t think that’s enough.’
‘How about if I tell you I work in finance?’
‘Lots of people work in finance.’
‘I have a penthouse that overlooks the city.’
‘Doesn’t everyone, these days?’
I marvel at the boredom in my own voice. My palms are sweating so much I have to keep switching the receiver from one hand to the other, but somehow I keep up this charade. When it’s just our voices, I can do it.
‘My favourite opera is Madame Butterfly.’
‘You could be any anonymous millionaire suit.’
‘So if I was poor you might say what you mean?’
‘I might.’
‘Then I am penniless.’
The words themselves are not unusual. But, I confess, the sudden conviction in his voice gives me pause. There’s something steely about it, as though he’s carving each word into a tree with a knife.
It makes me shiver, but I pretend it doesn’t.
‘You can’t change the dynamics just by saying.’
‘Of course I can. That’s how the game is played.’
‘And is that what The Harrington is about? Playing games?’
‘If you say the real words I might tell you yes or no.’
Whatever this game is, he’s extremely good at it. I didn’t agree to dancing, and yet somehow I’m doing it anyway. I’m doing it right here in the middle of the work day, with Michaela to one side of me yakking away into her own phone and my boss over there by the water cooler.
He gives me a slight nod, like he thinks I’m fielding an important call – and I suppose that is how I must look. I’m hunched over, near-whispering, one fist clenched over my keyboard. The other clinging to the phone for dear life.
‘All right. All right,’ I hiss at him. ‘People meet there to have illicit liaisons.’
‘I’m not sure that’s quite real enough. It sounds like something from a tabloid newspaper, about the swinging the neighbours have been doing.’
‘People meet there to have sex, then.’
‘Sex is better, but I think you can do more.’
I glance across at my boss. He’s no longer looking, but that doesn’t matter. This conversation is definitely giving off a vibe, now, that people should be able to feel across long distances and without glancing at me. I can feel it pulsing at my core like some nuclear reactor, so it must be spreading outwards.
Soon everyone will be irradiated.
At the very least, they’ll know. Alissa is having an oddly sexual conversation with a complete stranger, and doesn’t want to stop. Look at her there, shamelessly not stopping.
‘They meet to touch, and kiss, and lick,’ I say, and though my voice shakes I’m proud of myself. It feels like he shot a tennis ball at me with a cannon, and somehow I miraculously managed to smack it back.
‘And is that all?’
I close my eyes and take a breath, hovering on the brink of not obeying. He’s just toying with me, pushing me, daring me to go too far. I shouldn’t care. I should put the phone down. But I suppose the trouble is:
I want to go too far. I’m tired of living in the land of not far enough.
‘They meet to screw in every kind of position, all over each other and upside down and inside out. And when they’re done with all the things I can imagine, they start on the things I can’t. Threesomes and foursomes and things with toys … things with handcuffs and canes and red silk sliding all over their bodies …’
By the time I’m done my face is flaming, and I’m trembling all over. I barely even remember what I’ve said – it just came out in such a tumble, one word racing after the other, all of them so eager to emerge. I didn’t realise how eager I was to emerge.
But I think he does.
‘What a wonderful way with words you have when you really try.’
‘It’s nothing to do with trying. It’s just you and how goddamn persuasive you are.’
‘If I’m so persuasive then why are we talking about what you want to talk about?’
I frown at nothing and no one, the inside walls of my cubicles suddenly gone. Instead they’re replaced by his indomitable face, and its every infuriating line and curve.
‘No, we’re not.’
‘Of course we are. You wanted to know about The Harrington, and now I have told you – even though it is the most closed of all secrets.’
‘But this is … this is what we started out at. We started talking about it and then you wanted me to talk dirty.’
‘Oh, darling. If I wanted you to talk dirty there are a hundred other ways I would have gone about it. No no no, when we began talking I wanted to know what your face looked like, and you led me down an entirely different path. I must admit I am enjoying the view here, but even so – it’s your view, not mine.’
Oh, God, he’s right. How is he so right all the time? It would be impossibly frustrating, if he wasn’t so calm about it. So inoffensive. He doesn’t force his point of view on you. He just leads you down a certain path inside the labyrinth, and suddenly you’re lost.
‘It wasn’t … I didn’t do it on purpose, though.’
‘Didn’t you?’
‘Of course not. Why would I?’
‘Because you don’t want to talk about your face.’
This labyrinth is dark, and deep. I don’t know where I am any more.
‘Maybe I’m hideous,’ I say, so faintly I hardly have to worry if anyone can hear. Only he can, down a million miles of phone wires to his lair that lies beyond the goblin city.
‘I think it’s more likely that you think you’re hideous.’
‘No, I really am. I’m sure you think you’re talking to some gorgeous babe whose presence pushes through wood, but in reality I’m monstrous. I’m six foot tall and three hundred and fifty pounds, with no ears and one eye,’ I say, and I know why I do it. It’s so I can be the minotaur instead of the girl. I’m marching around his maze, hungry for his blood.
But he doesn’t care either way.
‘Are you just trying to turn me on now?’
‘A man like you isn’t turned on by no ears and one eye.’
‘Perhaps not – but I am turned on by the sound of your voice, and the way you watched me, and by your resistance. I’ve never known anyone long for something so much and yet be so afraid to take it when it’s offered.’
I’m the girl again, just like that. I’m running around the insides of myself, blind and fumbling – only I think I was wrong about him having a lair at the centre. I think I can see him atop one of the walls with a rope, and he just threw it down to me.
I won’t take it though. I don’t know him well enough to take it. This could be a trap, and once I’m up there he robs me of my self-esteem and makes a run for it.
‘You don’t know what I long for.’
‘How can you imagine so when you make it this clear? You long for something different, and lovely, and exciting,’ he says, as my eyes drift closed. ‘You long to be outside your own skin, for just a little while.’
I’ve never ached before over something someone’s said. I’m not used to the sensation, so sweet and hollow inside myself. It makes me swallow too thickly and keep my eyes closed in case someone sees I’m having feelings, and most of all it forces me to deny, deny, deny.
‘That’s all wrong.’
‘Is it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then why are you still on the phone?’
‘I’m putting it down.’
‘Of course you are.’
‘We’ll never speak again.’
‘No, never.’
Is it my imagination, or does he sound strangely sad when he says that last lonely ‘never’? It must be the former, and yet I can still hear the word echoing in my head a long t
ime after he’s said it. I let the silence spin out, just so I can feel it for a little while longer.
Before I have to say: ‘I’m really not pretty, you know.’
‘Tell me all the ways in which you think you’re not.’
‘My face is too square.’
‘So you have a strong jaw that I should angle up to the light, before I leave a trail of kisses over its perfect slant.’
‘And my upper lip is hardly there, while my lower one …’
‘Is so full and soft and sulky, as I lean in to steal a kiss.’
‘You wouldn’t want to. My skin is almost see-through and my hair is as thin as paper. I can never do anything with it.’
‘Except lie back and let me wrap my hand around those soft strands. Is it dark?’
‘It’s almost black.’
‘And your eyes?’
‘A muddy brown. A boring, dull, nothing brown,’ I say, though that’s not strictly true. It’s just that I don’t want him to recognise me as the girl from the lobby, not yet. Not while he’s so content to imagine me into someone else.
‘But you would look up at me with them, wouldn’t you?’
I know what he means. He means that I would look up at him as I took his cock in my mouth. He means it because I make him, in my head. I push him back on the bed, and lick along the length of him, wetly, greedily, oh, God.
‘I would.’
‘And what would those eyes of yours say?’
‘More, now, yes, please.’
I don’t know if I mean more of his words, or of the sex he doesn’t know we’re having in my head, or just everything, everything would be fine. He’s nothing like I thought and everything that I want, and if that means I have to take a leap of faith and grab the rope, I will.
‘Oh, so greedy. Are you greedy, little Alissa?’
‘You know I am.’
‘Then tell me what you want,’ he says, and the fantasy suddenly bleeds into reality. I blurt out words before I’m even sure he’s ready for them – words like ‘I want you to fuck my face.’
But he doesn’t let me down. Of course he doesn’t. I’m halfway up that rain-slicked granite-grey wall, and he’s still hauling me.
Run To You Page 3
